On a recent Saturday afternoon Gold Coast residents, tourists, and shoppers caught an odd sight: a flotilla of blue Schwinn Cruisers, two dozen in all, heading up State Parkway north of Division. Bystanders huzzah’d and occasionally wondered aloud what was going on. Jeremy Lewno, a boyish-looking man in a white T-shirt, cargo shorts, and a black helmet, explained to the curious that the group was on a tour conducted by Bobby Chicago’s Bike Hike, his fledgling company.
Squire started Bike Chicago in 1993, while he was still in college, with a rental stand at Oak Street Beach. Now in his 30s, he’s the big kahuna of the local bike-rental industry. He leases more than 200 bicycles, plus roller skates, from stands at North Avenue, Navy Pier, and two other sites near the lake. When Millennium Park opens later this month, he’ll be operating the city’s 300-berth commuter bike station, which will provide lockers, showers, a repair shop, and rentals. Squire also offers free guided tours of the lakefront four times a day and sells private group tours of Grant Park, Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast, Hyde Park, and from the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette to downtown Chicago.
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To alert the city of his intentions and find out if he’d neglected any legal steps, Lewno arranged a meeting with Burt Natarus, alderman for the 42nd ward, where he wanted to base his tours. “Talk about a naive kid,” Lewno says. “I went in there with this whole presentation—I thought I might need a bunch of stuff. I just wanted to look legit. I had a business plan, pictures of my bikes, and a little map of the routes we were going to be going on. None of that was shown. He just started giving me names and numbers of people I needed to be in touch with and said, ‘Write down these names and numbers,’ and I said OK.” After that, “I met with Burt Natarus about five times to get his approval and guidance,” says Lewno. “He got tired of seeing me, but if this wasn’t important to him, it sure was to me.”
“I like Jeremy’s concept, so why not send people over?” says Carlos Molina, chief concierge at Le Meridien. “Of course, I also send people to Bike Chicago.”
“Jeremy’s competing, and that’s fine,” says Squire. “It’s hard enough to make it in this racket. It’s a short season, it rains half of June, and 9/11 hasn’t helped. So maybe Jeremy isn’t doing well. Maybe he’s jealous. He’s targeted me, for whatever reason, to gain market share. I think about helping people, not destroying them, but this guy is thinking about destroying me. He probably thinks about me all night, about how to screw Josh and Bike Chicago.”
